Craft Room Overhaul

All the junk piled up in my craft room. 

My complete lack of organization.  The carpets are destroyed too.

To say my craft room is a disaster is an understatement.  We just bought our house about 7 months ago and before we bought it, it had renters living in it who did a lot of damage which was not aparent until we took posession of the home and it was finally empty.  Previous owners/renters threw darts and knives or stars or something at the walls, ceilings, doors and wood trim throughout the house, but it was the worst in my craft room. 


Hundreds of holes from darts, throwing stars or knives (we guess) on walls, ceilings, trim and doors throughout the house.

Also, gross alert (sorry, I don't know how else to describe it and not be completely disgusted by it) their kids wiped boogers all over everything...there were even words written on the walls of my craft room.  SO GROSS!  I think we need a biohazard team to come in just to paint.  Not to mention the carpet, lets just say I won't walk around without my shoes on even though we had them professionally cleaned 3 times.  Ok, end of grossness, enough said. 



Previous owners had painted over stained trim throughout the house without priming it first...which means all of the door frames, floor trim and window trim looks like this and must be scraped, sanded and primed 3 times before we can paint 2 more coats. 

Someone had painted over stained trim throughout the house without priming it first...which means all of the door frames, floor trim and window trim looks like this and must be sanded and primed 3 times before we can paint 2 more coats.  Anyway the room became a complete dumping ground and without shelves in the closets or walls, it was really hard to put anything away. 

Finally I decided how to tackle the room.  I masked up and used heavy grit sandpaper to sand the grossness off the walls (easier than washing with bleach).  Since there was so much damage to the walls from the darts/knives and some of the drywall was pulled out, my husband taught me a cool trick to fix it without having to mud multiple times.  You take the rounded side of a ball peen hammer and literally hammer a dent into the damaged part (not too deep, just deep enough so all of the sticking out parts are knocked in).  This seems counter intuitive, like its going to do more damage than good, but bare with me.  Then you take a spackle knife and drywall mud and fill the hole with mud.  Don't be afraid to use too much, more is better, you can always sand off the extra.  Every once in a while if you had a large hole, it may sink in a little and you may have to do a second round of mud once the first has dried, but usually not.  This makes the entire thing flat and you just sand the rough edges with a sand block and it's ready to prime!  I used a primer like Kilz to neutralize any biohazard and cover up all of the stains/muck on the walls.  It took two coats.  Finally its ready to paint.  I chose this pretty yellow as a base coat.

Becuase I had so much junk in the room and I'm trying to craft in it at the same time, I am doing two walls at a time so that the stuff can be stacked up against two walls and then moved to the other two walls when I'm done. 

I then used plastic folders and designed my own stencils in my Silhouette Cameo software.  Tutorial to come when I am finished.  I cut the folders down so I had two large flat 8.5x11 sheets and two smaller sheets out of the flaps.  I loaded them into my Silhouette and had to put them on the highest setting to cut the stencil.  It cut about 3/4 of the way through the stencil and basically scored it and then I used a dull exacto knife (a sharp one accidently cut through the stencil where it wasn't even scored) to cut the rest of the way through the stencil.
 

I made one stencil out of the big one and will be making one out of the small one for the walls in a pretty coral orange color. Then I made a different stencil to make curtains.

For the curtains I bought two 6'x9' cloth drop cloths and will cut them in half  to make two panels for each window in the room.  I plan to stencil them with the coral paint also.  Separate blog post to come for this process when I'm done with it.  I am currently washing the cloths (I tried ironing them and they were too thick).

My husband is also going to build me a large work bench for the center of the room, floor to ceiling shelves, and a wrap-around counter top on two walls with storage underneath.  We are going to pull up the carpet and either just paint the wood floor or install cheap vinyl so it can get crafts spilled on it and can easily be cleaned up.  I can't wait to show you when it is all done!